In recent years, there have been an increasing number of cases where an image forming apparatus, such as a printer and the like, connected to a network, such as a local area network (LAN) and the like, is shared with multiple external devices connected to the same network, for example.
In such a situation, among the above-described image forming apparatus, there are those that have a power saving mode which restricts the power supply to components other than the startup controller for the purpose of reducing the power consumption during standby until a startup request is inputted for the print execution command (see JP Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2005-193560, for example).
However, in the image forming apparatus described in the above-described JP Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2005-193560, when a reference request or an update request for the status information of the image forming apparatus is made from an external device during the power saving mode, a main central processing unit (CPU) that has associated a large power consumption is used to respond to such a request. Therefore, reduction of power consumption is prevented.
The present application considers such a situation. An objective of the present application is to provide an image forming apparatus and an image forming system which allow reduction of power consumption even if a reference request or an update request for status information of the image forming apparatus is made from an external device during a power saving mode.